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Essay on Sigmund Freud
One very influential model of psychology emerged with the founding of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He is a giant figure in twentieth century thought. His writings comprise over a million words, and there is a vast literature citing and discussing his ideas. Freud viewed his work as a scientific theory of the human mind, and he might rank as the most influential scientist of all time except that many consider him less a scientist than a philosopher or literary humanist. (Freud, S. (1999)).
Freud showed an early interest in science, first intending to study chemistry, then shifting to physiology and anatomy. He was especially impressed by evolutionary ideas then in vogue at the University of Vienna. He was attracted by the challenge that Darwin had posed of understanding man's nature in the light of humans having evolved from lower forms of life. Freud's first scientific publication, at age twenty-two, was on the structure of the spinal cord of a primitive fish. He showed his capacity for tireless research in a project to find testicles in male eels. Many earlier efforts had failed, but his persistence was rewarded after four hundred dissections.
Freud studied medicine in Vienna in the hope of pursuing scientific research. He worked in a physiological laboratory for several years, then in a psychiatric clinic, studying brain anatomy. After medical school he specialized in neurology, studying causes of brain damage. In 1885, Freud made a decisive turn to psychiatry while studying in Paris under the French neurologist Jean Charcot, who was treating women with hysteria using hypnotic suggestion. When he returned to Vienna, Freud started a private practice in "nervous diseases" and was much impressed by a case in which a Viennese physician Josef Breuer claimed to have cured hysterical paralysis. He induced the woman to reenact under hypnosis the traumatic guilt aroused while...................
